Louisiana, USA Crude oil washes ashore on Grand Terre Island, a barrier island between Barataria Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The island is one of a small archipelago that protects marshes to the north and is an important estuarine habitat. In April, the Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling rig, in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast, sunk after an explosion. Over the next four months, the resultant sea-floor oil gusher released an estimated 4.9 million barrels (nearly 780 million liters) of crude oil, making it the biggest marine oil spill in history and causing extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats, as well as to tourism and fishing industries in the Gulf. The rig, operated by Transocean under contract for BP, was drilling in about 1,525 meters of water, pushing the boundaries of deepwater drilling. President Barack Obama placed an immediate moratorium on new drilling off the US coast.

Benjamin Lowy was born in 1979. He received a BFA from Washington University, St Louis in 2002 and began his career covering the Iraq War in 2003 for Time. Since then he has covered major stories in Afghanistan, Darfur, Chad, Haiti, Indonesia, China and other various locations worldwide. In 2004, Lowy attended the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass and was nominated for the ICP Infinity Award. He was named in the Photo District News 30 and his images of Iraq were chosen by PDN as some of the most iconic of the 21st century.